Data Sync for Web

Overview

The goal of data sync is to store the browser data in a remote service so that different instances of Epiphany in different machines can all share that data an appear to be in synchrony.

We will sync:

• History
• Bookmarks

Other potential data to sync:

• Session state
• Cookies

The Epiphany bug to track this feature is here.

Implementation

Nothing is implemented so far, so for now this is just brainstorming/potential ideas, subject to change.

The feature should be implemented in the core browser, not as an extension. But:

• It "could" be implemented internally as an extension, if that makes sense (like EphySession).

• The data storage selection could be make pluggable to allow for other options (for instance, Ubuntu could use UbuntuOne, which we very likely won't use as default).

A reasonable option for the default backend would be FirefoxSync:

• The design of its APIs and data storage is public and open source.
• The design and implementation of the server part is also open source.
• Their instance of the sync server is publicly available and can be used by anyone.
• This would allow syncing between Epiphany and Firefox, and also allow cross-platform syncing (eg, to Firefox on Windows or OS X, or to mobile browsers that support Firefox Sync)

Things to double check:

• What do we need to do with our data to be able to use their service.
• Can be run indefinitely on their server or would it make sense to have sync.gnome.org at some point.

Summer of Code

There's a proposal to do this feature as a GSoC item, see here.